Warning: Contains spoilers for Star Trek: Discovery's season one finale.

Star Trek: Discovery might not have been Star Trek as the fans had come to expect, but by the end of its promising first season, it had won most sceptics over.

However, one thing that has been confusing fans is the timeline, as it's not been entirely clear how Discovery lines up with the original series – which starts 10 years after the events of Discovery – given that the starship has never been explicitly mentioned in any other Star Trek series, even though co-creator Alex Kurtzman has confirmed that there is a plan.

"We are wildly aware of everything that appears to be a deviation from canon. We will close out each of those issues when we close out our 10-year period and hit TOS," he explained earlier in the season.

After the big reveal at the end of Discovery's first season, maybe we'll get answers sooner rather than later though...

After Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) manages to end the Federation-Klingon War by giving L'Rell (Mary Chieffo) the detonator to the bomb hidden in Qo'noS, the crew of the Discovery are rightly lauded by the Federation and are on the way to Vulcan to meet their new captain.

Their journey is interrupted, though, by a distress signal that comes from the USS Enterprise itself, helmed by Captain Pike, the original Enterprise captain, with the first season ending as the two starships come face-to-face, or bow-to-bow.

Kurtzman is already aware that this ending would add further questions to the whole timeline debate that surrounds Discovery, telling Variety that Enterprise will play a part in season two and it will help solve Discovery's "synchronicity with canon".

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"The promise of the Enterprise holds the answers to a lot of those questions, including Spock's relationship with his half-sister who he's never mentioned. Which does not necessarily mean you're going to see Spock, just that we owe an answer to that question," he outlined, with co-showrunner Aaron Harberts adding to Inverse that they wanted to "rip that Band-Aid off" when it comes to Discovery's place in the timeline.

Of course, Burnham being Spock's adopted sister isn't the only timeline issue. If Discovery is set in the prime timeline, other issues include the fact that no-one has ever bothered to mention that the Klingons were on the brink of winning the war, that there's a spore drive that can instantly transport a starship anywhere or that there's this whole Mirror Universe that contains a different version of everyone.

The Mirror Universe has long been established in the prime timeline, so we're not saying that's against canon, but you'd think that when the USS Enterprise came across it in the original series, they might have gone, 'Oh, so THAT'S the Mirror Universe the Discovery was talking about, remember those guys?', rather than having to discover what it was by themselves.

A solution to that was hinted at in the penultimate episode 'The War Without, the War Within' as all evidence of the Mirror Universe was to be destroyed by the Federation when they got to Starbase 1, only for the USS Discovery to not reach it as it had already been overtaken by the Klingons, so who knows if that's what actually happened after the events on Qo'noS.

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We hope it's not the case, but it could well be that whenever Discovery comes to an end after however many seasons, we'll just have someone order all the events of the USS Discovery scrubbed from history as they're all top secret missions, tying all canon issues up in a neat bow.

It'd be a cheap way to go and the presence of the Enterprise in the show now gives us hope that it isn't what they'll do, and there will be genuine answers to why we've never heard of the USS Discovery before. However, we can't help feeling that Discovery could have taken a leaf from the rebooted movies, which would be more exciting than having the show exist in the prime timeline.

In JJ Abrams's 2009 movie, a brand new timeline is created after the Romulan ship Narada travels back in time and destroys the USS Kelvin, giving the timeline its official canon name of the Kelvin timeline.

This freed up the movies to do whatever they liked – such as destroying Vulcan – without worrying about how it affected the established timeline, adding the element of surprise even for dedicated Star Trek fans.

The USS Discovery itself has been hopping about in time and space too, accidentally ending up in the Mirror Universe and then coming back nine months later, not to mention Captain Lorca crossing universes too.

What if any of those events created a brand new timeline separate from the prime timeline? This would instantly solve most worries about canon – apart from Sarek never mentioning he had an adopted daughter – and also give the show the freedom to introduce classic Trek characters without concerning itself with whether or not it fits with what the character has done (or will do).

It could well be that this was the plan all along for Discovery and it'll fall into place during season two, but the showrunners have been pretty insistent that the show takes place in the prime timeline.

And it wouldn't be like the show to lie to us now, would it? Oh, hi Voq.